Pressing attack useless?

[chufa]

I've been talking to other captains, they all use pressing attack as their main attack for battle-hardened state. I find hard to understand why; I haven't had a good explanation, most are like "it is the newer skill, so it most be better, because every other captain does, etc."

For me I find it rather useless. It has some pros, such as a slight damage advantage over devastating blow when all hits land normally, and because of 2 hits, less of a chance to miss battle hardened state altogether. But crits with devastating blow are over twice as much as those with pressing attack. That beats very quickly whatever small amount DPS advantage pressing attack had; especially when you have high crit %

So what do you think? Am I missing something here?

[vr00mie]

Don't know what level you are, but if you've got your legendary weapon, you should take a look at the Pressing Attack Max Targets legacy.

[furtim]

Yeah, it's underwhelming when you first get it. The +targets legacy makes it way better. You can get nearly guaranteed crits off it with a decent amount of crit chance and a big crowd.

But, even then, Devastating Blow still has its place. It does have a higher innate Critical Magnitude, so I still rely on it whenever I only have one target to deal with.

[Elrantiri]

Also, when you use Lead the Charge along with certain armor sets for 6 second cooldown on Rallying Cry, you'll find that Pressing Attack with legacy is a really good source for keeping that 6s cooldown busy and heal your fellowship a good lot

[Jousimies]

Simply put:

You want AOE?
-Pressing attack

Only one target?
-Devastating blow

AOE prohibited?
-Devastating blow

[b4jet9597]

I very rarely use PA. I like the bigger hits from DB.

[DelgonTheWise]

I've been talking to other captains, they all use pressing attack as their main attack for battle-hardened state. I find hard to understand why; I haven't had a good explanation, most are like "it is the newer skill, so it most be better, because every other captain does, etc."

For me I find it rather useless. It has some pros, such as a slight damage advantage over devastating blow when all hits land normally, and because of 2 hits, less of a chance to miss battle hardened state altogether. But crits with devastating blow are over twice as much as those with pressing attack. That beats very quickly whatever small amount DPS advantage pressing attack had; especially when you have high crit %

So what do you think? Am I missing something here?

I'm assuming you are talking about single target situations? Only reason I know to use PA in single target is if you value the crit more than the damage for the defeat event, and you have the PA Crit legacy on your LI.

Multiple targets, PA is a clear win. It defaults to 2 targets, but you can expand that with the associated LI legacy. I tend to go for 5 targets myself. It is an awesome provider of defeat events...

[chufa]

Thanks. I forgot about the AoE of Pressing Attack. I guess I'll use PE when facing 2+ mobs, and devastating on 1v1's. I am on my first legendary, and unfortunately it has neither PE or DB legacies.

[SapienChavez]

one more point to add:

there are also Legacies that increase the base crit rating of Pressing Attack and for Devastating Blow.

before i hit crit-cap, i had the PA legacy on my weapon and it allowed THAT skill to be crit-capped... giving PA about a 1% better crit chance than DB...

so, for a time i used it on single targets too, as a defeat response is more important, to me, than the dmg output.

would only use DB in those, no AoE, situations.


7 targets all with a 30% chance to crit is something i think all capns favor. it rules!

[TinDragon]

Going off of what others have said, since there are two +crit legacies, one for Dev Blow and one for Pressing Attack, but you may only have room for one, Pressing Attack is the better choice for two reasons. One, it'll raise the crit chance on each mob that it hits. That will obviously raise your chance to crit overall. Two, Pressing Attack can be used as a single-target skill as well (as long as you're more concerned with the defeat response than the DPS, which most captains are, since cappy DPS is laughably low) whereas Dev Blow can ONLY be used on one target.

Obviously what everyone else has said already also holds true. As a skill to generate defeat responses, Pressing Attack will almost always win. I don't think that needs any elaboration though, everyone else has done a pretty good job of explaining.

[Reximus]

Due to the way legacies work and the fact I'm looking to open as many defeat responses as possible in order to do my job I only use Pressing Attack. But I don't Raid either, so I don't have much worry about hitting things I shouldn't, assuming that is even a problem in any current Raids.

[TinDragon]

Due to the way legacies work and the fact I'm looking to open as many defeat responses as possible in order to do my job I only use Pressing Attack. But I don't Raid either, so I don't have much worry about hitting things I shouldn't, assuming that is even a problem in any current Raids.

Not currently, for the Erebor stuff anyway. OD maybe, since trash pulls don't tend to spread out much, but I'm not sure if people really even CC that much in there anymore.

[blkplg13]

pressing attack with the tanking erebor set generates more aggro. it depends on the situation otherwise. like a previous poster said, Single target DB, Aoe PA, Aoe prohib, DB

[ydoc]

It's all subjective, there are many scenarios that restrict PA from use like no aoes allowed or even situations where only one target to deal with.

Pressing attack shines when there are 3 or more enemies (by increasing your Critical hit chance to open a defeat event) or by 5 or more enemies for all that nice extra dps goodness.

Pressing attack is also useful to captains like me who overwork there skill chain so hard that Devastating blow can often be on cool down when a new battle ready state is entered(happens often for me, and yes i know cd is only 4.3 seconds). In those situations I use Pressing attack to continue the chain, and then DB on the next 4.3 second cd.


Early game however Pressing attack only has 2 targets max swinging 2 times and hitting 4 times on 2 targets. You only have a chance to defeat event on the last hit which means only 1 extra chance to get an event for a major loss in dps.

I found that on my captain in early lvls pressing attack wasn't really worth using as much as DB, finishing the targets off quickly was more important that Defeat events.

[TinDragon]

It's all subjective, there are many scenarios that restrict PA from use like no aoes allowed or even situations where only one target to deal with.

If you've got only one space on your LI for +crit, PA is the one you'd want to pick. PA can hit a single target whereas DB can't hit multiple ones. Therefore, it's a slightly better choice for defeat responses, even in single target battles.
There aren't many fights where you're absolutely not allowed to AoE nowadays.

[ydoc]

If you've got only one space on your LI for +crit, PA is the one you'd want to pick. PA can hit a single target whereas DB can't hit multiple ones. Therefore, it's a slightly better choice for defeat responses, even in single target battles.
There aren't many fights where you're absolutely not allowed to AoE nowadays.

I beg to differ, Things dieing faster is more important then a defeat event. Devastating blow is the clear winner in the majority of situations, with the exception of trash mob stomping. Defeat events are capable of being gotten a myriad of ways but the traditional way of killing something still works just as well as forced PA. Don't get me wrong I still use PA in multi mob scenario's to force defeat events on an as needed basis. But I prefer Devastating blow over PA for it's increased single target finishing power. Especially in PVP where finishing off a target is as important as not letting a raid boss full heal himself.


Also Aside from this it should be obvious that a PA does not need help for making a Defeat event trigger, with 7 targets it almost always crits one out of 7 times. Where as Devastating blow is a single hit and more apt not to crit. In my experience DB is the money maker and the one you want to focus on. I treat PA as a tool to create Defeat events and a convienent AOE when AOE is required. Other then that PA doesnt get my love. Instead I have always focus'ed on forcing DB to be as effective at creating Defeat events as PA. Which is not done strictly through Forced events but through a combination of Forced events/Traditional events by speeding up the rate at which things are dieing.